That specific argument has been made a lot of times and overruled as many times. Don't be so naive, a world without copyright could perfectly work. It would just be very, very different. It's not like anyone wants just the complete abolition of copyright law to happen, and nothing else, obviously that wouldn't be very fair. You're misrepresenting the situation by depicting a world just like ours, with the single difference that you'd be free to steal the work of an author.
Think about an analogous situation. If you would have told people 40 years ago that a variant of Unix would be made, completely open-source and free, and with large companies working on it too, not just some hobbyists, would they have believed something like that is possible. And yet, Linux still exists. I know copyright is very relevant for Linux (GPL etc...) but I want to show that it is possible for completely other systems to develop than the traditional, where you pay for an (unexpirable) license on the copyrighted work which is kept completely proprietary with some fair use additions.
In any case, fixing copyright doesn't seem that hard. In a world with copyright, which is perfectly fine by the way, the term could be much much shorter. >70 years is a disaster. 7 years seems fair and I think it would vastly enrich our culture, for a very small price to the creators of original work. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that seems like a good start.
Your posting has also written numerous times and yet I have seen no one answer this question:
> Don't be so naive, a world without copyright could perfectly work.
Nobody forces authors to rely on copyright and authors are not all stupid sheep. So why doesn't the market lead to copyright-free books if they are viable?
And even if it works for some books, who says it can work for most (or all) books? Just like FOSS is a good model for Linux and lots of science/enterprise/commodity software, but still hasn't caught on in many other areas. What is holding video games without copyright back from overtaking traditional AAA titles?
A copyright limited to 7 years would be interesting.
>Nobody forces authors to rely on copyright and authors are not all stupid sheep. So why doesn't the market lead to copyright-free books if they are viable?
Huh? Of course people will take copyright if it's offered, because they get it for nothing. Just like most farmers will take subsidies offered to them, whether or not they actually need them. Just because someone retains (and makes money off) the copyright to a novel they wrote doesn't mean they wouldn't have written it in the absence of copyright.
>Just like FOSS is a good model for Linux and lots of science/enterprise/commodity software, but still hasn't caught on in many other areas. What is holding video games without copyright back from overtaking traditional AAA titles?
I think it's a very unusual set of circumstances, and some dedicated idealists, that have lead to the success of OSS. But again, even if there were no OSS programs, that wouldn't mean that a world without copyright would have no programs. People tend to take rewards they are offered.
Maybe I interpreted the grandparent's "perfectly" here a bit too literally:
> Don't be so naive, a world without copyright could perfectly work.
I don't doubt for a second that some music would be recorded and some software be written without copyright. But for it to be "perfect" or anything close to that, it'd have to be of the same amount or at least quality. How is it naive to doubt that this would be the case?
I used the word naive to preemptively deflect the bad argument that I would be naive because I believe in a working world without the current idea of copyright, something which I hear way too often.
If we take the word naive to mean "lacking experience, information or clear judgement", I would say a person is naive is he believes a world without copyright would lead to no creative works appearing at all. You say some works would still be created but the original post I replied to implied nothing would be created at all.
I think it's important to realise, there is no way to know whether a world without copyright would work other than just doing it. But I've heard enough arguments in favour and I'm reasonably sure it would.
Think about an analogous situation. If you would have told people 40 years ago that a variant of Unix would be made, completely open-source and free, and with large companies working on it too, not just some hobbyists, would they have believed something like that is possible. And yet, Linux still exists. I know copyright is very relevant for Linux (GPL etc...) but I want to show that it is possible for completely other systems to develop than the traditional, where you pay for an (unexpirable) license on the copyrighted work which is kept completely proprietary with some fair use additions.
In any case, fixing copyright doesn't seem that hard. In a world with copyright, which is perfectly fine by the way, the term could be much much shorter. >70 years is a disaster. 7 years seems fair and I think it would vastly enrich our culture, for a very small price to the creators of original work. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that seems like a good start.